Natural Sciences and ethical violations

Rhea Sachdeva

Group members: Ayman, Nina, and Keely

Date: April 4th-17th

AOK badge: Natural sciences

4/5/17

We watched a video introducing us to the intricacies of natural science. It was interesting in the way that he presented natural science as something that was more subjective, rather than scientific fact. I thought it was odd how he included events like the Big Bang as not scientific facts, because I always imagined it as one. I considered it as something that was already proven, but I guess that must have been mainly the way I grew up.

4/11/17

Today I read the elective reading about the placebo effect and how it works for the natural science. It was interesting to read about since I take psychology and this topic was brought up in the class as well. I find it incredible that it works so accurately, as it does nothing to mechanically stop the disease. It was interesting to learn about the "care effect" as they described it. I never realized that something as simple as paying attention to the patient and treating them with kindness could have such a significant effect on them. Something as intense as arthritis problems in the knee could become less painful if the patients were simply treated with care. This had the same effects as the subjects who actually underwent knee surgery.

I plan to do my paragraph to talk about the use of ethical violations in science and how viable it is. It will be interesting to talk about since it's such a broad topic. In psychology we always consider ethical violations for studies and experiments, so this will be especially fun to talk about. It's something I always had to think about when mentioning most studies in psychology, so I think it's good to touch on a topic that I've already gone over so many times.

Paragraph 1

Natural science is an area where multiple studies all around the world are all done to enhance the pursuit of knowledge, but one question that was always relevant are the ethical restrictions. Ethical restrictions should be considered, but sometimes it is necessary to bypass some ethical considerations in order to gain more knowledge. An example is the placebo effect, and since I’m also taking a psychology class we have talked a lot about this phenomenon. The placebo effect is defined as a circumstance usually in medicine in which the medicine doesn’t actually help the problem, but the people administering the medicine say that it does. The participants often don’t realize that it’s a fake, and would take the medicine believing it works as well as any other. Since their mind has this idea that the medicine is completely real, they tend to report as many beneficial effects as any other person who took effective medicine. The healing is not attributed to the medicine however, but the person’s mind. There are ethical considerations to keep in mind however. For example, deceit is necessary for this experiment to work. If people were informed that the medicine is fake, they would not believe it, and the placebo effect would not occur. In this case, it is absolutely necessary to use deceit or the experiment would have showed negative results. While the placebo effect is widely regarded now, when it started out it could have been controversial because if you didn’t give people in need proper medicine, they could be seriously injured. While deceit is an ethical violation, it is necessary for this research and scenario to work.

Paragraph 1.2 (Redo)

Natural science is an area where multiple studies all around the world are all done to enhance the pursuit of knowledge, but one question that was always relevant are the ethical restrictions. Ethical restrictions should be considered, but it is necessary to bypass some ethical considerations in order to gain more knowledge. An example is the placebo effect, which uses deception to work. Since their mind has this idea that the medicine is completely real, they tend to report as many beneficial effects as any other person who took effective medicine. The healing is not attributed to the medicine however, but the person’s mind. There are ethical considerations to keep in mind. If people were informed that the medicine is fake, they would not believe it, and the placebo effect would not occur. In this case, it is absolutely necessary to use deceit or the experiment would have showed negative results. Therefore, the knowledge was gained through using deceit. While the placebo effect is widely regarded now, when it started out it could have been considered controversial if you didn’t give people in need proper medicine, because they could be seriously injured. The research obtained in this experiment is greatly beneficial to society and shows how something such as a placebo can work as well as a regular part of medicine. The knowledge gained through this experiment is greater than the ethical violation of deception, and because of that there are cases in which ethical violations are necessary.

4/16/17

Overall the project was really interesting to research. I liked reading the elective pieces since it related to a topic that I am very familiar with. The idea of the Placebo effect is something that has been mentioned multiple times before, so learning a new spin on a familiar topic was really intriguing. While I had to redo my paragraph, it simply gave me another opportunity to research the topic more and analyze the reasons as to why.

To what extent should are ethical considerations necessary?

Sometimes, like when using a Placebo, deceit is an ethical consideration that must be violated. In other famous studies there have also been some violations of a certain ethical consideration, but usually the research gained is immensely greater compared to the minor ethical oversight.

Do the ends justify the means in the natural sciences?

This is a tricky and subjective question to answer. Research can be highly vital for many human lives in the future, but it doesn't mean that all ethical violations should be violated in order to conduct the research. This is why I wonder what the boundary should be when it comes to the yield of research gained.

Do scientists have ethical responsibilities?

This question directly relates to the main topic about ethical violations in the scientific community. While I know there are guidelines that a scientist must follow, actually following every single ethical responsibility depends on the situation and experiment. While it would be beneficial to do so, some experiments have other requirements.

For my extension proposal I would like to include this link: http://jme.bmj.com/content/30/6/551. This is an essay focusing on clinical ethics and in particular, the use of placebos. It is an organized case that both explains the use of placebos, and talks about specific circumstances in which they are used. It also mentions that some placebos can actually be used without deception, which means it won't violate that ethical consideration. While this mainly focuses on the use of placebos instead of the research, it is still relevant because the research is put into place in order for this object to be used clinically. It is highly organized and provides a lot of knowledge and detail.